Under All Those Falling Stars
by PassionandPromise
Summary: One-Shot. When Shiro sleeps, Kuroh dreams.


Before, Kuroh dreamt of a King with a gentle smile and a broken body. After, he found him in the Intensive Care Unit, encased in a white sheet and breathing through a mask that seemed to smother his pale-as-snow skin.

Kuroh imagined his eyes were a liquid amber.

He sat by the boy's bed, waiting for the kid to wake up.

After three days, he realised he wouldn't.

* * *

"What's wrong with him?"

Kukuri looked up from the chart she had in her hands. Her watch ticked time as she held the frail boy's wrist in hers, counting each and every beat of his fragile heart.

"Everything you can imagine," she answered cryptically, sadly. Kuroh frowned at that. She sighed, before writing something on the chart with a mechanical pencil she'd drawn from her breast pocket. The boy continued to breathe, slowly.

Kuroh wondered what it would be like to stop those breaths with a kiss.

"What's his name? The chart… doesn't have a name," Kuroh finished. Kukuri watched his eyes as they fell to the floor, ashamed. She smiled softly.

"He has no name."

A breeze from a nearby open window fluttered the sleeping boy's white hair.

Something inside Kuroh grew deep, bottomless. He didn't know what it was. He gripped his fists tighter to the arms of the chair, tightened his jaw. He shouldn't have been here, anyway. His teacher should never have suggested he come here, should never have asked him to try to make a friend.

"_Why_?"

"Because he was found outside the hospital a few years back, and there was nothing on him except for the clothes he wore. The reason why he's still here is… a little strange, but…" Kukuri seemed unsure: Kuroh didn't push her. Of course there would be other reasons, some of them not privy to a complete stranger.

"Even still, knowing he'll never wake up, will you still come here, everyday? He's never had anyone in to see him: maybe that's why it feels so lonely in here all the time." She gripped the end of the bed, and her knuckles turned white with tension. In the silence, he could hear the pumping thrill of the life support, and as he glanced back to the small body sleeping in that very big bed, he wondered if this boy would continue to haunt him in all his dreams-

Just like they had all those times before.

* * *

_It was raining and they were standing apart. Kuroh felt the distance. The umbrella was lifted away from the stranger's face, and a soft, gentle grin greeted Kuroh. Amber eyes so rich they seemed unearthly found his._

_"__Do you want to slay me now?"_

* * *

"Kuroh Yatogami?"

Kuroh looked up from his English textbook. The teacher was at the board, tapping it with the white chalk in his hand. Everyone was watching him from the top of the class, waiting for him to answer the question.

He wondered if school actually mattered when there was a boy in that hospital who would sleep his entire life away.

* * *

"Have you ever tried waking him?"

Kukuri glanced to the window. "Of course. We've tried everything, but his heart would always stop whenever we repeated the treatment. It's like his body is trying to tell us it doesn't _want_ to wake up."

The sudden beep of the heart monitor made the room go cold. It was so quiet Kuroh could hear the breaths of air through the mask.

How many times has his heart stopped over the course of his life?

"How long has he been here?"

Kukuri fidgeted with her hands. "I think it's been three years."

"You should try speaking to him, you know." Ichigen-sensei sat cross-legged at the low table, watching as Kuroh swiped the air with the long, knowing strokes. Ichigen-sensei's garden was vast, full of colours and the smells of soothing herbs. From a little distance off, Kuroh could hear the peaceful sounds of trickling water and little bells tied to small strings. "It may bring him back."

Kuroh stopped, the sweat beading down his bare back. "I don't think anything can bring him back."

He didn't see Ichigen-sensei's small smile, but he did hear the words, "But what if your words were what brought you home?"

* * *

Kuroh opened the door to the room and peeked in. The darkness of the night overwhelmed the room, the green of the heart monitor against the white of the bed a stark contrast to the darkness of the shadows. Beyond that, he could see the stars, which he thought strange, considering they were in the city. He stepped in, easily avoiding the nurses and doctors.

Hours were quiet this time of the morning: barely anyone noticed the ebony-haired teenager as he walked silently through the immaculate halls. Maybe they thought he was a ghost: he wasn't sure.

He closed the door behind him, then sat at the sae chair he had these past ten days.

"Hi," he said, fidgeting with his fingers. He rested both elbows on his knees. The heart monitor beeped again, and in between one and the other, something shifted, and all Kuroh wanted to do was talk, talk until he had nothing left to say, no more voice to say anything with.

"My name is Kuroh Yatogami, and I'm afraid I don't know you who are. But-" he stopped, then smiled, a gentle one, one directed at the sleeping boy whose breaths grew weaker in the night. "-I would like to get to know you better. You seem like the kind of boy who'd smile until you had no more smiles left to give." _Yet, you'd probably still give more. _

He stopped fidgeting, reached out for a limb hand on the bed. This was the first time, and he'd noticed the pale, slender wrist was so frail, so… small, that his fingers could wrap around them easily. The sudden thought, that he truly needed to be careful in case he actually did break this boy in two, was something so unexpected he nearly dropped the stranger's arm altogether. If he wasn't careful, he could break this boy's arm.

He was cold. _Freezing_.

"I wonder if you're actually alive, if you can hear me," he said offhandedly. _It feels like you've already gone away. _The thought felt appropriate: something more in those words ran deeper than even he could guess. Pushing his chair as close as he could to the bed, Kuroh imagined he'd crossed a space between one world and another.

He felt he done it a long time ago, in another place, in another time.

* * *

_The rain was drowning him. It felt like slick ice against his numb fingers. Kotowari lay, unused, by his side, and someone by the name of Reisi Munakata towered over him- indomitable, _**_leering_**_, and sparked full of the lightning blue colours famous of the Clan he ruled._

_"__Is _**_he_**_ the one you serve now? The Colourless King… the _**_weakest_**_ king?"_

_Ichigen-sensei's fleeting face captured Kuroh's mind, before everything went completely, utterly, black._

_…_

_He was standing on the ledge of a building that stretched high into the night sky. The wind was fresh around his face: he shuddered in his long black coat as it flapped against his legs. His hair whipped out around him, and the streets far below his feet were mazes, arteries in a city gone wild._

_Two swords danced in the air, one a dazzling shade of electric blue, the other a royal red._

_It seemed strange, surreal._

_"__You're standing in your own world now."_

_Kuroh glanced over his shoulder to see a pair of amber eyes, an aura of silver glowing like a beacon, guiding him home. An umbrella rested in one hand, and a long coat similar to his billowed around a slender body. His hair was dishevelled. He was a foot shorter than him. He looked as fragile as he did when he lay in that bed, and yet… He was strong. The air crackled around them, between them, and Kuroh had to hold a breath to hide his surprise. He didn't think this stranger was as strong as he was._

_He felt that in this universe they were the only two left alive. _

_"__Where are we?"_

_"__That depends on where you are when you are dreaming, Kuroh-kun." His voice was soft, weak. Kuroh almost couldn't hear him over the sound of the drawn-out wind around them. He wondered if the kid would fall off the ledge if a wind strong enough pushed him hard enough. _

_"__I am dreaming. So where are we now?"_

_The boy smiled, not answering. "That's for you to decide, Kuroh-kun." He cocked his head to the side. "I can hear the sounds of the heart monitor from here. It's like it's counting time, telling me when you have to go back."_

_It was the strangest thing to say, so strange that Kuroh stepped back. "You said 'kun'. How do we know each other, and why am I dreaming of you?" And, because it was so important to him, he asked, "What's your name?"_

_The boy laughed, the sound a musical lilt in the wind-whipped air. Kuroh stepped forward, reaching out a hand to touch his. He stopped when he was a breath away, and in that second, the wind stopped, the world silenced itself, and the darkness, the stars, the swords high above both their heads, seemed to brighten, darken, clash and explode. Colours, so many colours, blew up around the two of them, between the two of them._

_The boy grasped his hand before he could, tightened each finger around his wrist with a strength that warmed Kuroh's chest. He didn't know why. _

_This boy felt like home. Suddenly, he felt tired._

_"__It's Shiro. You used to call me Shiro. Please, keep calling my name. You'll come home if you keep calling my name. I'll keep finding you, Kuroh-kun, I promise."_

_Kuroh's world shifted to darkness, shadows and coldness. The imprint of his hand- Shiro's- was gone completely. He couldn't remember that warmth, that feeling, and everything inside him turned to ice._

_But his voice, he remembered that voice: it was one thing the dreams couldn't take away from him. _

_In that darkness, Kuroh could hear his voice still. He thought he was saying:_

**_"_****_I won't give up."_**

* * *

Kuroh opened his eyes, jumped off the uncomfortable chair. The room was freezing, dark, and sweat beaded his skin, a ghostly reminder of the rain and the stormy wind that pelted against his face mere seconds earlier. His heart raced with a thrill he'd never felt before, the blood pounded in his ears, his hands trembled- itched- to strike something, and while he mulled over the flashing images in his mind of a place that still struggled to survive in his memory, he didn't realise that the hand he was still holding was warm, thrumming with an undercurrent of life.

"Kuroh…" a voice that was not his own whispered in the darkness. Kuroh didn't hear him.

Something twitched in Kuroh's hand, and it was then that he looked down to the bed to see that the hand he was holding… was trembling. Not with cold, but with something that seemed like fear.

"What the-" he started, grabbing with both hands the warmth of the smaller one. He blinked, unable to believe his eyes.

"Can you hear me? Am I… reaching you?" he asked, hesitant. He was probably making all this up: none of it was real.

"Shiro? Can you hear me?" he asked, more confident.

**_"_****_I won't give up."_**

There was no answer in the empty darkness.

* * *

At seven in the morning, on the twelfth day, the sound of the door opening woke Kuroh from his dreamless sleep. He stood and found Kukuri had come into the room, one hand holding a basin, the other holding a separate chart. She blinked, eyes wide.

"How did you-?" she started. She dropped the basin at the small table near the door.

"I forgot to go home," he answered quickly, noticing for the first time that he still wore the blue blazer of the school uniform. All the times before that, he'd worn his white shirt and trousers.

"Oh dear. Ichigen-sensei is quite… _persistent_, isn't he? I didn't think you had to stay here all the time." The slight hitch in her voice caught Kuroh: he knew he really shouldn't have stayed here overnight. "Why does he want you here, may I ask?" She maneuvered around him, reaching for the IV drip, checking the stats on the heart monitor with ease.

"He wants me to… make a friend. I found-" he stopped, unable to say that one name aloud, "-I found_ him_ on my first day here." She stopped, and looked over her shoulder.

"And why did you decide to make friends with a _dead_ boy?"

Kuroh froze.

He stared at Kukuri, whose eyes were a steel flint on her once-cheerful face. She was grasping the IV drip with white knuckles. "He won't be alive for much longer, once the life support is shut down. He will die without it."

"What?!" Kuroh's voice rose. "Why will they-"

"Because he's been here too long, Kuroh, and besides, even if we were to find a way to fund the operation-"

"What operation?" he gritted his teeth. "Tell me, please-" he stepped close to her, his six foot towering over her measly five. "What's wrong with him?"

Kukuri didn't say anything, not for a few seconds. She looked to be weighing her options, her eyes unreadable, before she finally sighed. "He has no ribcage. He can't breathe properly without life support because otherwise the blood flowing through his body will weigh down on his lungs, suffocating him. It's happened, a few times before, when the oxygen count suddenly dropped on the machines."

Kuroh faltered. His heart stopped.

"No** ribcage**? How is that possible? How- he shouldn't be alive if he was only brought in here a few-"

Kukuri shook her head. "He's never woken up. We don't know anything," she turned to look down on Shiro's sleeping face. Kuroh followed her gaze, only this time, he saw different. He didn't see a boy who would never wake up: he saw one who was trying to break out of whatever spell he'd been put under. "At first, he was a rarity the doctors couldn't stop researching, but because he looks like a child, all the reports and tests had to be done on him in secret. No-one outside of this hospital knows anything about him, or what he is."

"And what is he to you?" Kuroh asked, gripping his fists with a renewed anger he'd never felt before, Rage boiled like fire in his veins. By God, he wanted nothing more than to punch his way through whatever barrier he could just to get the kid to wake up.

"Someone who's suffered long enough," she answered. "Imagine, never belonging to anyone, a test subject in a place that can't find any answers, sleeping for all these years and knowing you cannot ever wake up. It's-" she clasped her hands together, "-it's _tragic_."

Kukuri walked past him, grabbing the basin on her way out, and closing the door with a small click.

Kuroh watched Shiro still. The sun began to shine, a falter through the clear glass of the windows, and all that light bathed Shiro in hues of silver and iridescent white. Carefully, he reached out until his hand hovered over the boy's chest. A slight fear wracked him, a certain curiosity too. He wanted to touch him, to feel the hollow chest of someone he barely knew, yet knew so well.

Reaching out, his fingertips grazed the white bed covers, the cold seeping through the warmth of his hand. He could feel the weak rise and fall of Shiro's chest. The skin felt… paper-thin, ready to cut under the slightest pressure. There was no strength here, not like in his dreams. Bit by bit, he gently lowered his hand, and sure enough- if he wanted it- he could feel nothing, no bone, no rigid force against his hand.

There really was nothing there, nothing except skin and raw, weak muscle protecting him from death.

"Shiro," he murmured, curling his hand into a fist, right over that small thread of a heartbeat.

**None** of what he'd been told made sense: how could someone live their life only to be found later on _sleeping_ outside a hospital? _None__ of it made sense_-

But somehow, he wondered if any of it** needed** to make sense: he'd _dreamt _of this kid a long time before he actually met him-

_"__It's Shiro,"_ that voice whispered in his mind. _"You used to call me Shiro. Please, keep calling my name. You'll come home if you keep calling my name. I'll keep finding you, Kuroh-kun, I promise."_

"Shiro," he said now. "Shiro. Shiro. Shiro."

Even when he lost his voice from saying it so many times, he whispered it in his mind. Again. Again. Again.

Under his fingertips, Shiro's fragile heart continued to beat, ticking the time like the swing of a pendulum.

* * *

A girl with green and blue eyes stood at the front of Miwa Ichigen's residence. She was holding a small, silver package with the word 'Kuroh' written on it. Ichigen-sensei knew what this meant.

"How long does he have left, little cat?" he asked, a sad smile on his gentle face.

"Until Shiro cannot stay any longer," she answered, the bell earring she wore tinkling in the silent air. "He can't strain between these two worlds without causing havoc in our own for too much longer. It's already causing rifts between our world… and this one, wherever it is."

Ichigen-sensei shook his head. "I can't get him to reach the Silver King. Something keeps holding him back."

"I don't think its Kuroh-kun's doing, though. I think something else is interfering with the space between here, and… there." She frowned, her hair curling in sudden anger. She pushed the package into Ichigen-sensei's hands. "Please, get him to take this. It'll help. Shiro said it'll help. He said he won't give up until Kuroh-kun finds his way back."

Ichigen-sensei smiled again, sadder than the cat had ever seen him.

"I know. He'll come home soon. I know he will."

Later, when Neko was gone, Ichigen-sensei passed the little package onto Kuroh. He pressed it into his palms with a delicate urgency. "Take this, Kuroh. Take it and keep it safe. It's all yours now. And please… _go home_," he'd added. Kuroh's eyes widened.

It was almost time for them to say goodbye.

Kuroh bowed to his master, his teacher, and wondered when on earth the world began to feel so small, so claustrophobic-

Something had felt so eerily wrong… so-

* * *

Kuroh's eyes opened. He found himself slumped over the bed in the hospital room again.

Within his open palm- the one resting by Shiro's upturned palm- lay a chain, and on the end of it, Kotowari hung. Kotowari, his sword from another world, small and thin, in the palm of his hand.

He wasn't sure what to make of it.

* * *

_"__Is it just me or does that guy look sick?" _

_"__Who?"_

_"__The boy at the top of the damn class," Misaki muttered in reply to Saruhiko. His arms were crossed, his flame-red hair peeking out from under his beanie._

_Kuroh turned to face the boy with pale-white hair and pale-as-snow skin. The purple bruises under his eyes told him more than he needed to know._

'What is going on? I don't understand any of this-'

_Shiro's eyes- rich and swirling with liquid amber- found his cool blue ones. He was muttering something, Kuroh wasn't sure what it was, and everyone was turning to look at him at the bottom of the class-_

_"__Shiro," he murmured, wondering if his voice would reach his friend. Shiro smiled. Of course it would._

_"__Kuroh-kun," Shiro replied in as soft a voice as ever. It was weaker than the last time. Truly weak. "Wake up."_

* * *

"Don't wake him up. He shouldn't be awake when-"

"Ma'am, we need to take him off the bed-"

"Just hold him down in case he wakes up. There's nothing more we can do…"

The darkness that clung to the space under Kuroh's lids became a livid red with the sensation of knowing what would happen next. So **this** is how they planned Shiro's death: they hoped that when Kuroh woke up, Shiro wouldn't even be lying next to him anymore-

Kuroh swallowed. All of a sudden, he remembered Ichigen-sensei's smiling face, his words-

_"__Take this, Kuroh. Take it and keep it safe. It's all yours now. And please… _go home_."_

**Ah**. He _remembered_ now.

Kotowari still lay, small and limb, in his closed fist. He squeezed it tight.

"I'm shutting off the systems-"

The sound of metal ringing the air made Kuroh open his eyes wide. He jumped, weightless, into the air, and slashed at the closest thing that wore a white coat. Blood splattered everywhere.

In his hand, the handle of Kotowari nestled, and stretched under him, the blade of his sword stood, unyielding and beautiful. There were three in the room, all wearing white coats. Kukuri stood a little off from them, her hands resting over the switches close to the bed. Shiro was still breathing, still alive.

"You made me believe he was going to die," he said to Kukuri. Her face morphed into that of a wretched creature. He didn't know what it was, demon or animal, but he wanted to make it pay for what it had done to both him and his King. Shiro. "Maybe he was. In this world."

"Well, he won't be alive for much longer, now, will he? The living can't thrive in the realm of the _dead-_"

"But this isn't the world of the dead either," Kuroh countered. "It's… **in between**, isn't it?"

It had to be Neko. That cat could alter worlds if she wanted to. That's how Shiro had tried to contact him- in his dreams, the ones he had in the _living_ world, at the times when his heart beat. And when he wasn't dreaming, the worlds separated... became entangled with the worlds of the dead.

The Colourless King's face turned sour. "How would someone as pathetic as you know the difference? After all," it grinned viciously, "You're the only one who's truly here."

He was. He was straddling worlds after the bloody battle between the Reds and Blues. He couldn't recall the details, he didn't really want to, but he did want to go home, like Ichigen-sensei had told him to.

Kuroh dived for the King, and swerved when one of the white coats jumped in front of him. He danced, and his blood mingled with theirs, the walls, the bed sheets, and the world turned shades darker. Outside, the sun blared with the force of a thousand burning lights, and with each swing of Kotowari, it became brighter and brighter.

He was winning. He had no choice. He wanted to _go home_.

Again, he dove for the King, the broken King, the one Ichigen-sensei told him to kill if he was truly evil.

"Maybe I am the one who's half-dead," he muttered. "But I am **not alone**."

Shiro said he would keep trying.

In the end, he hadn't given up.

He drove his sword right into the Colourless King's chest without hesitation, and when the world turned white, he swore he heard his master, his teacher, his _father_, Ichigen-sensei whisper, "Goodbye, Kuroh-kun."

* * *

Kuroh opened his eyes to darkness and the sweaty grip of a hand holding his. His vision was blurry. He could see a head of pink. He didn't know what it was, who it was, but he didn't feel wary of it. The bed he lay on was a soft one, and for the first time he was aware of the plastic mask around his face.

Was _he_ the one in a hospital?

He blinked, but his vision stayed blurry. Head on fire, he was too weak to care.

"I didn't think you were going to wake up," Neko said, and Kuroh heard the smile in her voice. He smiled softly. "Shiro told me to keep trying, but I didn't think you were going to come back."

"Stupid King," Kuroh muttered. Neko chuckled, and without hesitation, she curled up and at Kuroh's side.

"Where's Shiro-" he breathed around the mask.

"There," she nudged his cheek to the side, where both his hand and the hand of his King were linked. "He's been holding onto you for days now. He hasn't let go."

Kuroh couldn't see him very well, but the halo of white hair and the tired breaths the Silver King took in his sleep were enough to tell him Yashiro Isana was infinitely real. Not dead. Not dying. Not anything other than completely and utterly real.

His King didn't give up on him. He threw himself into the void and saved his friend with open arms.

"Thanks, Neko."

"You should be thanking him, not me. I really didn't think you could make it back from the dead. After that Yukari guy hit you with his sword, you just fell, and Shiro thought he'd never see-"

"I know. I remember."

Kuroh's eyes were closing to the sound of Shiro's steady breaths. With a strength he didn't think he had, he squeezed Shiro's hand. He kept his grip all through the night, even when he wasn't aware of it.

That morning, when Shiro woke up from the sleep he'd been under for thirteen days straight, Kuroh still hadn't let go of that hand. Wordless, he took off the mask covering Kuroh's face. Neko had switched off the oxygen during the night: they both knew he didn't need it anymore.

If Kuroh woke up hours later thinking he'd been kissed in his dreams, he certainly didn't mention it to the one person who'd mattered most now in his life.

* * *

_**A/N: **_Hey guys! Hope everyone's enjoying the summer holidays! Yeah, I've recently started watching _Project K,_ and I've gotten stuck on all the relationships between each of the characters... wonder if you can guess my favourite couple? Heh! :D

Thanks for reading!

xxxx


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